Catalogue entry

The artist wrote (18 November 1955): ‘My Oxen was the final picture of a series of paintings I made in Italy and in my studio in 1954 following a holiday staying with friends in a villa in the country near Siena. I made many drawings of oxen ploughing, hauling and being shod. The “lead up” to the picture in question was a smaller one that was bought by the Leicester City Art Gallery in which the oxen are smaller and the landscape more extended. I have also made an etching of more or less the same composition.’

A smaller picture of oxen ploughing was also in the R.A. (439, as ‘Oxen’) and further studies were exhibited at the Zwemmer Gallery, October–November 1955.

Published in:Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II